


The Whole Truth

by lonelywalker



Category: Foyle's War
Genre: Age Difference, M/M, World War II
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-04-19
Updated: 2011-04-19
Packaged: 2017-10-18 09:21:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,873
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/187357
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lonelywalker/pseuds/lonelywalker
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Foyle discovers a kindred spirit... and a moral dilemma.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Whole Truth

_“I disgust you.”  
“Not at all.”  
“I wish I could believe you.”  
“It’s true…”  
\- Foyle’s War, “Amongst The Few”._

There’s a moment he’s grown to savour in life, partly from sentiment, partly from practical necessity. It’s that brief few seconds of not quite waking up, when all he knows is that his bed is warm, that the pillows are soft, and that he’s not entirely alone. Sometimes he thinks he would prefer if it were always that way. There’s no romance in the watery tea of breakfast-time, mixed in with stale leaves. Passion never quite breaks through the night to the following morning. There’s love, of course: that quiet, understanding, comfortable love of a committed relationship. But that’s something entirely different. He hasn’t had love in a very long time.

Foyle blinks his eyes, and remembers. The temptation to nestle back into the blankets, in search of five minutes’ more sleep, and that same wonderful dreamy state upon waking, is hard to resist. In five more minutes, it will be even harder. Then he’ll convince himself to turn over and attempt to rekindle the previous night’s state of aroused abandon. And that would be impossible.

He swings his legs out of bed, grabs his robe, and leaves the room without looking back. Eggs. Eggs will do it. There’s no passion killer like eggs, particularly the rationed, powdered, tasteless eggs of wartime England. In the kitchen he can make an attempt to be normal, to pretend as if this is the same as any other morning. Usually these early, brisk hours are spent in something of a haze, going through the motions while his mind is preoccupied elsewhere, concentrated on the minutiae of a distant case. Today the problem is closer at hand, and he has no solution.

He also has no time. Sam will be here in precisely one hour: immaculately dressed, hair pinned back as if she expects to spend the day at a church meeting rather than touring bloody crime scenes. She’ll also be cheerful, beaming, a kind of visual alarm clock to awaken his slumbering senses. Usually Sam inspires him to an attitude bearing more sarcasm than exuberance, and he suspects today will be no different.

“Mr. Foyle?”

How difficult would it be to pretend? To forget? The man behind him, no doubt standing in the doorway, could easily be one of Andrew’s friends, sleeping over. Foyle isn’t sure whether the fact that it really is one of Andrew’s friends makes the delusion easier. He finishes filling the kettle with water, hoping that the noise will be its own excuse for his lack of an instant reply. Setting it down, there is nothing more he can do but admit to the existence of a handsome young man in his kitchen. Anything else would be rude. “Good morning, Rex,” Foyle says with a briskness of which an Eton schoolmaster might be proud. “Sleep well?”

They both seem to be taken off guard by the ease of his tone. “Uh, yes, thank you, sir. I wondered if I might trouble you for an aspirin?”

Foyle could kick himself for forgetting. His problems may be all too real, in an abstract moral and legal sense, but Rex is the man for whom they have come in the form of searing pain. In a way the reminder is a relief. If they can stand together the morning after, making tea and discussing headaches, perhaps they’ll be able to refrain from anything but banalities and small talk for the rest of their lives. “Yes, of course. Try the medicine cabinet in the bathroom.” He turns, as he says it, as if he really is addressing no more than a polite, earnest public schoolboy with skinned knees and a bump on the head. It’s a terrible, regrettable mistake.

Rex is, indeed, standing in the open doorway leading out of the kitchen, olive trousers held up by braces stretched over broad muscular shoulders. There’s no shirt, of course. Foyle had thoughtlessly thrown it in the laundry basket the previous evening without a thought to the consequences. How very unlike him, simply to take a dirty shirt and treat it as if it were only what it appeared to be. But now there is damning evidence in amongst his own clothes, and, in what may be much more difficult to disguise, he finds himself looking and wanting. Of course Rex should just take one of Andrew’s shirts – they’re about the same size – but then Andrew would miss the shirt eventually, or would see it on Rex, and lies would have to be told. Foyle knows the tangled web that even one deceptive word can weave.

For a moment he’s left speechless as Rex, obviously tired more than one night’s sleep could repair, rubs his eyes. “Thanks,” the boy mumbles, still trying to clear his vision as he turns and leaves to go in the direction of the bathroom. It’s a moment before Foyle can tear his gaze away from the door.

He’s adorable: all the education and manners of a respectable Englishman coupled with the fearlessness, expertise, and strength of the military to which he belongs. In Foyle’s son, these are qualities to admire. Andrew’s insistence on defending his country rather than remaining safely at an administrative job in the city has been infuriating at times, but Foyle has never for a second stopped being proud of him. Andrew is his son, after all. Witnessing the effect Rex, a man so very similar to Andrew, has on him is an enlightening and worrying experience.

Would he ever touch Andrew? No. God, no. But, then, he had never thought of touching Rex…

“Tea?” he asks, a little too brightly as Rex reappears, white pills heaped in his hand. Assuming an affirmative answer, Foyle sets out two cups. “We’ll have to get you to a doctor today.”

There’s a pause as Rex gulps down the pills. “I’m supposed to be dead,” he says, reaching for a cup and the cold tap.

“Thank God you’re not.” Perhaps his voice is a little sharp, but he means it. Andrew had been genuinely distraught when Rex’s plane had been shot down. Foyle, too, had been struck with a greater grief than he had anticipated at the loss of a young man he had barely known. At the time, only two days ago, he had attributed it to the fear of losing Andrew – his only family. Now he’s not so sure.

Two days ago, Rex had admitted to accidentally killing his fiancée, and to being sexually attracted to another man – to Andrew. The girl had died as a result of confronting Rex about his homosexuality. It hadn’t been murder, but Foyle had doubted that a court, sickened by Rex’s confession, would see it that way. Rex must have thought it all through, too. Andrew had said that Rex had behaved in the air like he wanted to be followed and attacked by the German fighters. Rex had wanted to die a hero, and to be remembered as a patriot, not as a perverted murderer. The realisation that a young man had died as a result of his sexuality was one to shake even a stern police officer like Christopher Foyle. Perhaps it was just too close to home.

“You should clean yourself up,” Foyle says, as the clock on the wall brings Sam’s arrival ever closer. And, of course, she’ll be early. “You can find some of Andrew’s clothes in the other room.” To hell with all the evidence. Any investigator worth his salt could already lay a damning case at his door. At least one of the neighbours must have seen or heard Rex last night. There are the used cups, the stained sheets, the aspirin gone from its place. Foyle knows there is little point in trying to conceal Rex’s presence. As for Andrew… He’ll tell Andrew, if he needs to know. They’re all grown men. He almost smiles at his own daring. It’s so easy to delude himself within his own head. The real problems are much more complex than the fate of an old shirt.

“Mr. Foyle…” Rex doesn’t even know which question to ask, by the look of him. Foyle knows all the answers except the most important one.

He tries the reassuring, omnipotent paternal tone that normally convinces Andrew and Sam. “Clean yourself up, Rex. We’ll talk in a few minutes.” If only he could convince himself. He wants to be anything but a father figure to this young man.

The water finally boils as Rex ducks out of the room. All Foyle needs is time, to process the events of the previous night and reach a logical, reasoned solution. This morning, however, he has barely enough of an opportunity to drink tea and get dressed, let alone deal with the case of a dead girl and a man who shouldn’t be alive.

No one has done anything wrong. He has to cling to that, even if the law and the morality of most of the population of England would disagree with him. Rex is a good man with the best intentions, willing to die for the right cause. His fiancée’s death was a tragic accident. And last night… Last night should never have happened, and it will never happen again. Foyle, however, is in no mood to start regretting and being ashamed of a few blissful hours he would give anything to relive.

He had thought he was seeing a ghost. Appropriately, he had been reading Dickens – _Bleak House_ – and submerging himself in the angst of fictional cases. The loss of Rex Talbot, one of England’s finest airmen, had dissipated with the previous day’s news and concerns. The investigation had been closed… until Rex, exhausted and practically dead on his feet, had knocked at his door.

Several miracles had taken place, Foyle soon learned, as he got Rex inside by the fire and fed him tea with as much sugar as he could find. The plane had indeed been shot down by German aircraft as Andrew had reported. Instead of going down in fire and smoke, Rex had decided to fight to survive – crashing far off the radar in the English countryside. Shaken, concussed, and barely conscious, Rex had struggled from the wreckage, walking to the nearest farm road and hitching a ride towards the city. From there he had by some fluke recalled Foyle’s address. A miracle, indeed.

Foyle had sat, and listened, and wondered why, of all people, Rex would choose him. Presumed dead, at least until the plane was discovered, Rex would be free to escape the police investigation into his fiancée’s death. He could run to Scotland, or to his own family. He should have gone anywhere but into the arms of the very man charged with arresting him. Foyle smiles grimly. _Into the arms_. An unfortunate choice of words, but maybe an apt one. Of course the boy hadn’t been thinking straight. He had been afraid, confused, battered and bruised. Foyle shouldn’t read anything into it, and he hadn’t. Not at first, at any rate.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Foyle,” Rex had told him. It had been the only thing he could say for almost half an hour, until his teeth stopped chattering with either cold or nerves. Foyle had little idea for what he might be apologising. For intruding on him at such a late hour? It seemed ridiculous, but then Rex is a man shaped by his own moral compass.

Foyle had repeated himself too. “That’s quite all right, Rex.” How hollow those words must have sounded, when the boy was obviously running through any number of horrific scenarios in his head. Foyle had offered to call for an ambulance, or for Sam, to get Rex to a doctor. Something in him was glad that Rex shook his head every time.

Eventually the story had come out, of Rex’s heroic fight, and his survival against all the odds. Had it been a police interview, Foyle would have pressed for a few more details, but this was no interrogation. “I don’t know what to do,” Rex had said. He hadn’t been pleading, begging for leniency. He had just been a tired, resigned man who had already done everything he could. Rex, despite the demons of conscience waging war in his mind, had chosen to live. The rest was up to Foyle.

“I’ll get this back to Andrew,” Rex says, buttoning up a pale blue shirt. He almost looks presentable, now – short hair smoothed back with a wet comb, face washed, and eyes clear. Unfortunately he can’t scrub away the black and blue marks scarring his forehead. In a week or two the bruises and the headaches will be gone, and he’ll look just as he did when Andrew first introduced them. Well, almost like that. Foyle suspects that, whatever the outcome of this case, or even just this morning, there will always be some remnant of horror in those soft brown eyes.

Foyle pours him a cup of tea, piping hot. “Andrew won’t mind. He’ll be happy to see you’re alive.”

For a moment, as Rex carefully takes the cup from the table, it seems as if the boy might just be too polite to say anything. He might just do everything his manners tell him he should – to forget spending the night naked in another man’s bed; to just go to the police and tell the truth. Not the whole truth, no. Not everything. He’ll leave out the things it would be indecorous to mention: the way the flames had lit up his eyes with desire, the seconds when there had been hot breath on his skin, and fingers nimbly unbuttoning his ragged shirt. Foyle should know. No one ever tells the whole truth. It’s always too much.

“What do you want me to do, Mr. Foyle?”

In theory this most-feared question is the simplest to answer. “It’s my duty to take you in, Rex. I may have to arrest you.”

“But it was an accident.” Again, despite the words, it’s not a plea.

Foyle nods, resisting the impulse to pat the young man’s shoulder. Affection is better left to memories. “I know, Rex. However, I need to take your statement, and you need to speak with a lawyer. He’ll give you better advice than I can.”

“I doubt that.” Rex gives him a hint of a smile. “Will I go to prison?”

“I hope not.” Foyle checks the clock on the wall again, and heads towards the door, in search of clothes that might disguise any hints of the man he was last night. “You have a good chance they won’t even prosecute you. You’re a hero. You’re young. People like you. It would be a hard case to make.”

Rex follows, still sipping on his tea. “But not impossible. I concealed evidence… I didn’t tell you the truth in the first place. And if I tell them the truth now… What would they think of me?”

So much for adopting a balanced, level, non-committal view of the facts. Foyle finds neatly ironed trousers and a shirt hanging in his cupboard, lays them on his unmade bed, and slips out of his robe. Somehow nudity no longer seems either inappropriate or erotic. “You can’t tell them why you argued, Rex. They can’t know that you were in love with Andrew. It’s not important, and it will only prejudice the jury.”

It all sounds so rational when he couches it in legal terms. All he wants to say is _lie, Rex, lie through your teeth as long as you get away_. He should never have let it get this far. Keeping certain facts back from the prosecutor as purely a matter of his own conscience could have been bearable. But now… he’s slept with his own suspect. He’s advised the suspect to lie. How much lower could he have gone?

“Does anyone know? About you, I mean.”

Foyle looks up and around at Rex, suddenly acutely aware of his own nakedness, and the eyes of another man on him. “Did you think that I had never done this before?”

“I… I’m sorry. That was a stupid question.” Rex bows his head and turns away, suddenly embarrassed. “I just… I’ll never tell. You don’t have to worry about me.”

The thought hadn’t even occurred to him. As Rex disappears from the doorway, Foyle throws on his shirt. Neither of them will strike a dapper figure today, but perhaps he can be forgiven one lapse of… What? Decorum? Judgement? Ethics? Maybe truth, in one respect, is the way to go. He’s been forgetting the bigger picture. If Rex, as he expects, withholds the details of his sexuality, he might go free. Maybe it’s not the best thing. If Rex lies, he’ll return to active duty in a few weeks. God knows how much Foyle worries about his son. Andrew and Rex are the most senior members of their squadron. Everyone else is dead. Surely a few years in prison, even with an indelible mark on his reputation, would be better than dying young. The whole truth could save Rex’s life.

But what kind of a hypocrite would that make him? Foyle hasn’t told a whisper of the truth about himself to anyone in years, not until a young pilot’s eyes begged him for some kind of understanding, some kind of forgiveness. It wasn’t much at all, to say that Rex’s love for Andrew wasn’t something that revolted him, the way it might disgust a hundred other men. It wasn’t much, but it was everything. He wouldn’t have said it to anyone else.

Had Rex suspected, even then? Perhaps that was why he had come to Foyle’s door, of all the directions his subconscious could have propelled him. He needed to talk to someone who understood. Looking at him, shaken and bruised, huddled in a blanket by the fire, Foyle had needed someone who understood too. How much of a lie would it have been, to answer Rex’s inevitable questions with some story about a nameless friend? It didn’t have to be him. He didn’t have to tell the truth by drawing Rex in through his explanations and then kissing him in a move that surprised them both.

It had to be a real kiss, not the kind of brief platonic touch that might pass between actors. It had to explain more than words could say, and to prove that everything he had said was as real as he had claimed. Of course Rex could have just taken him at his word. No one who had been truly outraged could have treated him with such kindness and acceptance. But sitting there, seeing Rex’s fears mark his face, the realisation had slowly dawned that this was a boy whose budding desires had always been hidden behind confusion and horror about his own feelings. Rex had needed to know, and Foyle, as he now realises, had needed to tell him.

“You too?” Rex had whispered, hoarse and barely believing the look in Foyle’s eyes.

After that, there had been nothing more to say.

The act of making love had become so alien to him over the years that he had suspected that going to bed with Rex Talbot would be a short, brutal affair – a mutual relief of stress and hormonal tension. Instead, in the dark chill of his bedroom, he had found a surprisingly willing and tender lover. Maybe it wasn’t so surprising. Rex had longed for Andrew over the years of their friendship. Foyle must have been the next best thing.

He had been careful not to shock and scare Rex any more than was made necessary by the situation. It was not the time for a more thorough induction into the art of homosexual love. There had been no need for penetration. Persuading Rex’s body to relax had been a difficult enough task even when Foyle’s hands and mouth had made it clear that no violence or hurt was intended. Perhaps the usual disparaging rumours had done far more damage to Rex’s psyche than reality ever had.

So he had been gentle, and slow, and it had been an unasked for delight to find Rex reaching out for him as well. The climax, in the end, had been nothing so wonderful as the journey there. Just the simple feeling of a warm masculine body against his, with hair and lips and fingertips rubbing his skin, had been a long-missed luxury.

After it all, Rex had shivered in his arms, whether from cold or pleasure or fear Foyle had little idea, but Foyle had held him there, and sleep had come quickly.

Foyle straightens his tie, sweeps imaginary dust from his jacket, and wishes he had made those eggs after all. Tea may be good enough to clear the mind, but it has made him remember last night in too vivid an account. This is not the time. Perhaps, when Rex has gone, and when Sam’s arrival is not imminent, he’ll take some joy in recalling it all in every detail. For now he needs to be steady, and to think impartial, logical thoughts. Eggs, indeed, would have been a great help in that direction.

He finds Rex sitting in the kitchen, hand on a rapidly cooling teacup, staring out of the window with eyes that barely seem to see at all. “Rex?” He can’t sustain this forced confidently paternal tone. “You need to decide what you want to do.”

“I don’t want to lie, Mr. Foyle.”

Foyle looks at him, and sees a boy who could so readily become a martyr on the back of his public school ideals of honesty and loyalty. “You don’t have to lie, Rex. You can tell the truth.”

Rex nods, his expression miserable. “Just not the whole truth.” He sighs, looking down and scratching at uneven fingernails. “I don’t want to drag Andrew into this. Or you. You’ve been… very good to me, sir.”

“Sam will be here in a few minutes,” Foyle says quietly. “We can take you to the police station. I’ll help you with your statement, and we’ll have a doctor take a look at you.”

“Thank you.” Rex pushes his chair back, stiff and a little unsteady, just as there is a firm rapping at the door. Sam has, very obviously, arrived.

Foyle casts a look in the direction of the door and, beyond it, the outside world. It and its judgements seem less than tempting. At long last, he breaks the barrier between them and reaches out to take Rex by the shoulder. “You must do what you believe to be right, Rex, whatever the consequences. That is the only demand I will ever make of you.”

“Thank you, Mr. Foyle,” Rex says again, but his words are no dull repeat. For the first time in days, Foyle can see a hint of a smile in the young man’s eyes.

“Yes, Sam!” Foyle calls as the door takes another pounding. “I _can_ hear you. So can most of England.” His hand squeezes Rex’s shoulder. “Come on,” he says quietly. “We’ll go together."


End file.
